Techmeme
March 20, 2023, 8:45 PM

Top News

Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Andy Jassy says Amazon plans to lay off an additional 9,000 employees, mostly in AWS, PXT, Advertising, and Twitch, after cutting 18,000+ jobs in January 2023  —  - Amazon will lay off 9,000 more employees in the coming weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff on Monday.
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Microsoft plans to launch an app store for Android and iOS games as soon as 2024 if regulators clear its $75B Activision bid and the EU's DMA rules take effect  —  Xbox boss Phil Spencer says store could launch as soon as next year if regulators clear Activision Blizzard deal
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:
Runway, which helped make Stable Diffusion, unveils its Gen 2 system for creating three-second video snippets from text-based prompts, available via a waitlist  —  Artificial intelligence has made remarkable progress with still images.  For months, services like Dall-E and Stable Diffusion …
ABC News:
An interview with Sam Altman on how “people should be happy” OpenAI is a “little bit scared of” its tools, GPT-4's rollout, large-scale disinformation, and more  —  “This will be the greatest technology humanity has yet developed,” he said.  —  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks with ABC News, Mar. 15, 2023.
Manya Saini / Reuters:
The FDIC plans to break up SVB and hold an auction for its traditional deposits unit and another for its private bank, after failing to find a buyer last week  —  The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on Monday decided to break up Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and hold two separate auctions …
Pete Schroeder / Reuters:
The FDIC plans to sell all of Signature Bank's 40 branches to Flagstar Bank, as well as some Signature loans and deposits not in its digital banking business  —  A subsidiary of New York Community Bancorp (NYCB.N) has entered into an agreement with U.S. regulators to purchase deposits and loans …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Netflix plans to launch 40 games in 2023 and has a further 70 in development with its partners, after releasing 55 titles since adding games in November 2021  —  Netflix has announced that it has 40 games slated for launch this year and has 70 in development with its partners.
Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
Microsoft speech recognition subsidiary Nuance debuts Dragon Ambient eXperience Express, which uses GPT-4 to generate clinical note drafts after patient visits  —  - Microsoft and its Nuance Communications subsidiary announced Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Express, a clinical notes application …
Matina Stevis-Gridneff / New York Times:
Sources: in 2021, the phone of a US and Greek national who worked on Meta's security and trust team was infected with Predator spyware from an Athens-based firm  —  Artemis Seaford, a dual U.S.-Greek national, was targeted with a cyberespionage tool while also under a wiretap by the Greek spy agency …
Washington Post:
CASM Technology and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue report: the average weekly number of antisemitic tweets more than doubled after Elon Musk's acquisition  —  Happy Monday!  If you thought it was a busy news cycle last week, buckle up.  Send tips to: cristiano.lima@washpost.com.
Michael Kan / PCMag:
Study: GPT models and related technologies could seriously affect ~19% of workers in the US, with higher-income jobs potentially facing greater exposure  —  Researchers examine how OpenAI's GPT technology could affect the workforce, and find 'the influence spans all wage levels …
More: VICE

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Zoho Backstage x Zoho MCP: Your events, now connected to AI  —  Event management involves a constant stream of decisions and actions.  Registration numbers change, attendee lists grow, ticket classes evolve, and new requests come in throughout the day.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Grit:
Data Centers in Orbit by 2028: Baiju Bhatt on His Plans After Robinhood
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
How to close $100K+ enterprise deals, step by step | Jen Abel
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Insane Hidden AI Spending, Ranking Anthropic vs. OpenAI, AI For Travel Debate
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
OpenAI's Two-Week Pause + Jill Lepore on the Threat of the "Artificial State" + Train of Thought
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
The $12.5 Billion Lakers, the NFL's TV Fight, and Sports Media's Big Split
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:45 PM ET, March 20, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Washington Post:
Abner Li / 9to5Google: